History of the Game
Introduction Probes vs Zealot has been one of the most popular custom maps since late 2011, when the first version of the game was officially published to the Arcade. It has consistently been regarded by thousands of players as one of the best cat-and-mouse games, and has been in the Top 10 spotlight for an extensive period of time. This page will discuss the history of the game and how it has progressed since the day of its official public release. Note: This is the story of PvZ from my (Parametric) point of view. I've been playing the game since 2011 and have seen all kinds of different strategies and trends rise and fall. The information below is based on my personal experiences to the best of my memory. Pobes vs Zeelot The First Release The game originally started off as Pobes vs Zeelot, a small custom map created by Darklord back in 2011, which was based of one of the top played (still being played) maps in Warcraft 3 called "Trolls and Elves" (Original map by VisionElf, IaMfReNcH and Mokra). Although the map originally appeared to be quite bland and simple, it immediately took off in popularity and quickly rose to the Top 10 spotlight. By the end of the first or second week of its release, Pobes vs Zeelot became the #1 game on the Arcade, followed by a massive influx of new players eager to discover what this new game was, and what it was about. Noobs Everywhere! For the first few weeks or so, everyone in the game was a noob, both the probes and the zealot. No one had any real idea of what they were doing let alone how to play the game properly. No one had a clue what "feeding" was, and so the vote kick feature was seldomly used except to rid the game of trolls. Back in this early stage of the game, probes basically won every game as not a single zealot knew what they were doing. Zealots did silly things like buy armor or life regeneration first and as a result quickly died to turrets in the mid stages of the game. Hunters and Probe Spirits During this time, whenever a probe got killed by the zealot, he was out for the rest of the round. There was nothing to do but wait after a player's probe got killed. The next major patch that Darklord added changed all of this by introducing hunters and probe spirits into the game. Now, players would get an option to become one of these two when they died and would be able to play an active role in changing the game. However, this quickly became abused. Suiciders and Hunters After this patch, some people (including me) decided that playing probe was too boring and decided to suicide every game. At this time there was no wait duration between dying as a probe and spawning as a hunter or probe spirit. The instant your probe was killed, the spawning window immediately popped up and within a few seconds you would become a hunter. All you had to do was either wait for the zealot to kill you, or build a turret and use it to attack your probe. Hunters were basically like second zealots, and as more people learned how to play the other side, zealot win rates quickly rose up. I remember in many of my games back in those days, there were usually at least four people who suicided every game to become hunter and help the zealot. Needless to say, probes became annoyed pretty quickly and eventually they began to automatically kick people who suicided. Wait Time Added The hunter problem stayed there for at least a month before Darklord added in another patch that prevented hunters and probe spirits from spawning until the 6-minute mark. While this didn't stop some people from continuing to suicide and help the zealot, the new patch did deter most people and forced them to learn how to play probe correctly. Now, because hunters had to wait 6 minutes before spawning, they were essentially useless unless the zealot fed them or they found multiple bases with no turrets to feed off of. It was also around this time that zealot win rates quickly began rising. People began to think that zealot was "overpowered", and to an extent they were correct because a good zealot would almost never lose in a public full lobby game. Automated Mine Constructors The next patch Darklord added enforced the supply limit on miners and automated mine constructors. This was because previously players were abusing the fact that SCVs cost no supply (this was an unfixed bug) and as a result creating dozens of collection depots, holding down T and then sending a ton of automated constructors by the hundreds to the zealot's base. Each of them only fed 10 minerals each, and while the zealot was trapped at his base the probes quickly maxed out and won the game. Unfortunately this mass SCV strategy was only able to be used for a short period of time before it was patched. (The last time I used this strategy back over a year ago, I was able to max out and beat the zealot with it. Two days later it was patched, so I guess that zealot must have been friends with Darklord or another one of the developers, who knows.) Rise of the Pros After a while, a small group of veteran players began to form. These players often played together in parties with each other and were exceptional at both probe and zealot. Some even went as far as making extensive spreadsheets detailing the cost effectiveness of various items and buildings and using that data to create optimal builds. It was during this time that some standard strategies finally became established and more widespread among the remaining player base. Some of these include: *HP build for zealots -- Previously, most zealots used a random mix of health, regeneration and armor which wasn't very effective in the mid-game. Now with more zealots using HP builds their win rate drastically increased. *Ninja bases with gold -- Believe it or not, hiding in a ninja base was not nearly as common in the original as it is now. Usually only good players hid in obscure locations and proxied miners at gold (or walled there and left after maxing their generator), while others took more common bases and relied on blue minerals. *Salvage and run -- This was rarely used in the original game compared to now where it's expected for all players in the early game. While waiting until +8 Cheesy Strategies Death of Pobes vs Zeelot Probes vs Zealot 2 TBD Category:Content